In this call we discussed how we all emotionally eat and how to get to the roots of the emotional upsets that drive the need to eat when we’re not hungry. Specifically, we walked through the door of having a “time of day” that tends to be a problem for you. Do you eat when you get home from work? Or maybe it’s after the kids are gone to bed? Or maybe you just eat extra large portions at dinner time? Whatever your “problem time” is, we start releasing the emotional resistance that prevents it from dissolving. Please feel free to share the audio!

If you’ve struggled with extra weight for more than a few years, you’ve likely developed some fat-programming. If you were overweight during the formative years of 0-7 years old, you most definitely have fat-programming.

Fat programming is what I call the subconscious thinking that tells us we’re fat. For those of us that were overweight kids, it usually started when we first became aware that we were “heavy” or that our body wasn’t as good as other people’s. For me it was grade two.

I had this pair of yellow pants you see. They were fantastic. I LOVED them. No one else had a pair of yellow pants, and even at seven years of age, I KNEW I looked good in those pants (how crazy is that?). I would’ve worn them to school every day if my mom let me.

Then “she” came to my school. “She” was a pretty little girl that we’ll call Lisa that had just moved into town and she was in my class. Guess what Lisa was wearing. You guessed it. Yellow pants. And she looked GOOD, better than me, even I knew it. Thus my “compare and despair” pattern and my fat programming started.

Now, I wasn’t overweight in grade two, not that I can recall anyway, but I knew I didn’t look as good as Lisa and I didn’t like it. Even as a young girl, I was buying into the stupid myth that women need to be attractive to be of value, which is often at the root of the negative emotion that accompanies fat programming.

That may seem like a silly, innocent story from my youth but that’s how our subconscious belief systems are built. It’s little, seemingly innocent experiences that we make false meaning out of and have some negative emotion about, that begin to program us.

Now, enter my older brother. His nickname for me for at least an entire year was Buffalo Butt. Then there was a lot of talk about the “Jackson Butt” in our family. Mom had it, my aunts had it, and my brother had deemed,; when I was about 10, that I had it too.

Then there was grade five. Ugh. Grade Five. Let’s not talk about that.

By the time I hit grade seven my self-esteem was non-existent. I wrote in my diary almost daily about being “so fat”. I hated myself. I hated my body. I had full blown fat-programming.

Some people develop their fat programming much later in life. The good news is, that’s generally easier to shift. If you grew up feeling fairly neutral or even good about your body you won’t have fat-programming written right into your identity.

Those with late-onset fat programming might have gotten it from a traumatic relationship, in which their partner criticized their weight, or it could’ve been created from compare and despair later in life, both of which usually have some roots in the pattern of women needing to be thin and attractive to be loved and approved of in our society.

No matter where your fat-programming came from, it’s time to let it go and, ironically, you HAVE to let it go if you want to reach and maintain a healthy body weight. If you’re feeling crappy about your body, there’s no way you can attract anything but a crappy body… at least not permanently. I always say, positive changes never come from negative mindsets.

That’s where EFT comes in. Try this audio on Negative Body Emotion and see if you can get into a more neutral state with your body. That’s the first step to getting into alignment with the solutions you need to permanently shift your body. It’s time to update your programming!

This is a FANTASTIC example to help you break through your fat programming as well!